Adblock Plus now allows “acceptable ads,” becomes SomeAdsBlocked Plus

The creator of Adblock Plus, the most popular browser add-on in the world, has finally acted on his crisis of faith and turned off ad blocking for non-intrusive “acceptable ads.” This change has only been made to the Firefox version of the add-on, but Chrome will receive the same treatment in the following months.

By default, when users install or upgrade to Adblock Plus 2.0 — which should be released tomorrow — acceptable ads will be displayed as you surf the web. You will have the option of disabling these ads and returning to your pristine, ad-free web — but as the lead developer, Wladimir Palant, well knows, people rarely change add-on settings unless something seriously annoys them. Indeed, this is why the default option will be to display acceptable ads — because the likelihood of people clicking through some menus to enable the display of ads is slim to none.

The idea of acceptable ads is ostensibly quite noble. For your favorite websites, ExtremeTech for example, you might want to ensure their survival by generating some ad revenue — but that doesn’t mean that you want your browser to be subsumed by animated or noisy Flash ads. “Acceptable ads,” in the words of ABP’s lead developer Wladimir Palant, are “static,” “preferably text only,” and only require “one script that will delay page load.” The long-term goal is to improve the survivability of all websites — but especially small ones, where that Google Ads box on the right is the only source of income.

The only problem is… Adblock Plus, the add-on itself, doesn’t automatically work out what ads are acceptable or not; it relies on a human-curated list of whitelisted ad providers. This list will be entirely maintained by Palant & Co., and at this point it isn’t clear if ABP is receiving monetary kickbacks from the likes of Google, other advertising behemoths, and other websites that rely on ad revenue for their survival. On the one hand, Palant says that Google has “nothing to do with it,” but he also says “we indeed hope to get some income this way.” In other words, it’s still early days for the acceptable ads initiative, and no one really knows how it will pan out.

It’s easy to see how this is a conflict of interest: It’s called Adblock Plus, after all, not SomeAdsBlocked. If an advertiser offers ABP enough money, can the definition of “acceptable” be stretched? Morally, it’s a very tough line to walk. The other point of view, though, is that advertisers might be inclined to tone down their ads so that ABP will rate their ads as “acceptable.” If ABP can singlehandedly stop the use of animated, distracting ads on the web, then surely that’s a good thing. Still, even from this perspective, Palant is acting as a censor — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but again it’s a precarious position to find yourself in.

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Unacceptable. I hope I can still use the old version when 2.0 is released, but if not I may shop for another adblocking extension for my FF and Chrome browsers. At least in Opera the adblocks aren’t from Palant and the IE tracking protection addon is built-in in IE9. In fact, after 10 years of using alternate browsers I’m now using IE by default again. :p

Anonymous

Within the article – “You will have the option of disabling these ads and returning to your pristine, ad-free web”

Lupius

Also within the article – “ExtremeTech’s survival depends on readers clicking on ads.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

*thumbs up*

Please remove ad blocking when browsing ET. It allows me to feed myself — and at this time of year, it also means I’m able to buy (very modest) Christmas presents for my family.

http://trochevs.myopenid.com/ SAL-e

Only when I stop reading posts that are clearly “sponsored” by somebody’s MDF (Market Development Funds).
I do take time to configure my AdBlockPlus to support sites that remains independent on the web. For now I can’t say this about ET.
For example you failed to mention that ABP has option to select different filter list. If Wladimir Palant abuses his censorship powers people will move away from his control by using different filter list.At the same time I like the change. Now I can enable static ads on all sites and disable annoying and intrusive ads, even on my favorites sites, in order to push back against aggressive marketers (I call those e-Snake-Oil-Sellers.)

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

As far as I know, no one at ET has any kind of stocks/shares.

Point taken, though — thanks for commenting!

http://trochevs.myopenid.com/ SAL-e

I’m not talking about stocks/shares/money. I am talking about things like publishing favorite articles in order to get in good graces with marketing department of some company in order to secure future invitations to media events or early access to devices for review and etc.

This is the same type of “conflict of interest” as you wrote. When conflict of interest occurs the choice based on solid principle makes all the difference. If you choose based on ‘all mighty dollar”, I will block all ads. On the other hand if you choose to serve your readers I will unblock all ads.

But remember… companies are willing to pay you for ads, because of your readers. By choosing to serve your advertisers will alienate your readers and as result you will lose your advertisers any way.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Ah-hah. Yeah, I can see the problem there. There are definitely sites that try to remain in Microsoft’s good books, or Intel’s. It’s sometimes a very hard line to draw in the tech world — on the one hand you have journalistic integrity (which feels very warm and fuzzy), and on the other you have exclusives, page views, etc.

re: serving your advertisers (and sponsors) — yeah, that’s tough. Generally you would demand editorial independence. As far as I know, that’s how Ziff Davis would handle it. Intel might sponsor us one day, but that wouldn’t preclude us from writing a bad story about Intel.

http://trochevs.myopenid.com/ SAL-e

This is part of the problem. Journalistic integrity should not be a warm and fuzzy and every time your choose to ‘win’ exclusives, page views, etc you are loosing reader’s trust an your future viability.
For example I can recommend to check-up how dpreview.com is handling the materials send to them from marketing departments of the different companies:
1. They publish the whole text as it as it is send by the company.
2. They add short comment summarizing the news and it is impartial and factual as possible.
3. Clear separation between the editorial comment and company material.

Their reviews remains objective and independent. Even when they receive pre-production model and they work with the company to allow time to correct a problem. When this happens, they report about the original problem and the solution provided by the company. That is why I keep ads un-blocked on dpreview.com and I am subscribed to their full RSS feed and from time to time read materials send by Canon, Nikon and etc.

Joel Hruska

Seb spoke poorly there, I think. He didn’t mean to imply that journalistic integrity was on one side of an equation while access to companies/exclusives/page views were on the other.

In point of fact, it would be nice if things were so black and white. :P

Anonymous

The world isn’t black-and-white like you talk. I want a mix of exclusives and journalistic integrity. You have to play both sides.

showadselloutwatch

true or not-true.

there is no middle. How is that not black and white? Seeing as shades of grade is a failure to make clear distinctions — some of which might require omniscience but distinctions nonetheless

Joel Hruska

SAL-e,

The problem here, as I see it, is that readers are extremely quick to DECIDE they’ve got evidence of such a relationship, even when none exists. It’s downright common for someone to show up and say things along the lines of “Well, has XXX mailed your checks yet?” (I’m not claiming you personally do this).

Furthermore, the fact that a company produces literature on a given topic and has a distinct interest in a certain viewpoint doesn’t *automatically* mean their work is invalid/factually incorrect. It’s the reviewer’s job to buttress any discussion of a manufacturer’s opinion with external research and validation.

As for publishing articles to get in the good graces of a company, after ten years in this industry, I’d say this: The companies that try to exert this sort of pressure are jealous wives that aren’t worth keeping around long term. Even the most aggressive of the tech companies I’ve worked with tend to back down rather than risk alienating authors who aren’t willing to be bullied into espousing viewpoints.

As for the authors that deliberately kowtow to such companies, they don’t tend be all that well respected over the long term. Granted, you can make an awful lot of money without any respectability. ;)

Here’s the bottom line: Paywalls on the Internet don’t work well at all. Journalists, regardless of their medium, must be compensated to do what they do. People who block advertisements unilaterally, without regard for the type or nature of the ads themselves, ultimately contribute to a scenario in which even the nominally independent news sites are forced out of business and the only portals left are those with intimate and direct ties to bankrolling corporations who use them as mouthpieces.

(This is also why advertising and editorial content are kept in strictly separated departments by any publication worth its salt).

showadselloutwatch

Please stop using third party ads which rape surfer privacy and we’ll talk.

http://awesomewallpapers.wordpress.com/ Ben

I think this change is a win-win situation for both website owners, and the users who want to block ads.

James Kirk

I don’t see a problem with this. Some people just like to see reds under the beds.

By the way, I think it is quite condescending to say that “people rarely change add-on settings”.

Jeff Law

ANYONE playing censor is anathema to the internet as we know it and love it. The point of ABP is to be truly even-handed: no one gets to play. This is a scary case of a slippery slope. Websites need to find internal means of revenue – if you run a blog, offer T-Shirts, and be forced to be witty enough to have something to put on them.

showadselloutwatch

intellectual honesty: pay-wall

everything else is willful ignorance

http://www.ratdiary.com spragued

FWIW the article and conversation here was more worthwhile that I found on Hacker News regarding this matter. I’ll be a new reader of this site. Maybe I’ll even look at the ads. ;-)

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Glad to hear it :)

Simon Dahl

Very interesting and difficult line to follow. I wondered why I was suddenly seeing ads in the last few days…… Somehow the face of the net has changed again.

I suppose this is going to be an on-going saga. I see there is, already, a fork in the AD Block code (True Block) with the option turned off by default :D

I am for anything that keeps flashing garish ads off my computer and saves on page real-estate. Otherwise I have no strong views for either side

Simon Dahl

Okay following this check out http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies
got blasted “acceptable ads” all over the page. obscuring content. how useful is this I wonder

Jsmith

It is a down right pain in the butt to disable the filters. I do not like ads because I consider them all to be intrusive on what I am doing so I went to try and change it. It takes 5 minutes of unchecking the allowed websites because there are so many. Should definitely rename this program and I will not be donating to them again.

showadselloutwatch

A more apt moniker is

ad”block” pluspaidads

why is wladimir palant not a laughing stock?

Let’s have an article about “opt”. Start with false-opt-in and include the malware(adware) that abounds on the android platform store. The best moniker of the latter is

“privacy rape”

Acceptable ads is a function of the user not the developer. Any wonder user blocks don’t override subscription whitelists?

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